15 May 2011

To outsiders (such as this writer) French politics often resemble a comic operetta: aren’t they cute, acting as if everything they do is so important? To French politicians, however, politics is a blood sport, and we’re receiving new proof of that this weekend, as a leading French Socialist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been arrested in New York on charges of sexual assault.

DSK (as he’s known in newspaper headlines in France) is manager of the International Monetary Fund and, prior to this weekend, presumed the candidate to beat in the next year’s elections for the French presidency. Now &mdash suddenly — there’s virtually no chance he’ll be able to run, even if he clears his name.

And so, despite the disturbing reports of evidence in the case against DSK, my first impulse was to wonder whether he’d been set up.

After all, DSK has several rivals, each of whom stands to benefit from his removal from the scene. Within his own party, the Socialists, Ségolène Royal (losing candidate in the 2007 election) and party secretary Martine Aubry each stand an improved chance of winning the party’s nomination. Until now, DSK polled very well in public-opinion surveys, and his reputation as a prudent manager, even a fiscal conservative, positioned him well to draw votes away from other parties, especially those on the right.

That’s surely the judgment shared by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the center-right UMP, who got DSK his job at the IMF not least to eliminate the need to guard his own left flank. Sarkozy has made a mini-career of appeals to the far right, portraying himself as a reasonable alternative to the Front National, for example, by co-opting themes and proposals, especially where immigration policy is concerned. This hasn’t always played well to the more moderate factions of his own party — who in turn might see DSK as a reasonable alternative to Sarkozy himself.

Are any French politicians capable of orchestrating such a scandal simply to eliminate a political rival? Sarkozy thinks so. Look back to the Clearstream Affair: Sarkozy was initially implicated, but cleared. He came to believe that the then-Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, had framed him, at a time when the two were rivals for the UMP nomination. Sarkozy cleared himself, won first the nomination, then the presidency, and thereupon Villepin was dragged through the courts. Though Villepin was acquitted, there’s quite a lot that still smells fishy.

Even if DSK is found innocent of all charges in the assault case, he’s made a target of himself, and Americans may be forgiven for remembering Bill Clinton right now. Traditionally the French have cared little about the sexual peccadilloes of their politicians, but the mood appears to have evolved in recent years; moreover, the ongoing spectacle of Silvio Berlusconi’s Italian sex romps has been viewed with disdain by most French people. There’s undeniable potency in the suggestion (or reminder) that a President Strauss-Kahn might similarly embarrass France, one day.

Several politicians have leapt forward to announce that France is embarrassed already. And reporters — who waited so eagerly for Strauss-Kahn to declare his candidacy for the presidency — will have to wait a good deal longer.

Either of those is possible (and I underscore hypothetically), though I also considered the Lucianne Goldberg/Linda Tripp strategy of sending an innocent woman into the politician's path and letting his worst instincts do the rest.

Well, I know you are going to chastise me for straying just a little bit here, but it is campus feminists, not Linda Tripp, who pioneered the ploy of seducing a man into an in flagrante situation and then accusing him of attempted rape.